This is for those of you wanting to understand a common struggle for world racers coming back to the U.S.
Throughout a World Race, you learn to live with change. Change is a constant thing whether we like it or not and how we handle change is often key. Even so, as humans we tend to avoid it if at all possible. I wrote a blog before I left on the race talking about sight and perspective. In this blog I mentioned how we all wear glasses in which we see everything. This past year we had a chance to look at this world through our own perspective and even had a number of opportunities to see life through the eyes of others. Many of our stories displayed this for you so that you could live and see vicariously through us. However, the main point of my blog was that the object is to look at things through His eyes and not just through an assortment of other people’s glasses.
Being back home is slightly like Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave. If you aren’t at all familiar with this or if you need a refresher, I’d suggest clicking here: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html
Have you ever been in a cave or mine shaft? It’s crazy how deep the darkness can be and how blinding light, even a soft light, can be when you step into it. Likewise, going from a bright room into a much darker area is blinding. Regardless of your transition, it usually takes your eyes awhile to adjust to its surroundings. Slowly though, we naturally get comfortable with the surroundings we find ourselves in and can see once again.
Being back home is slightly like Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave. If you aren’t at all familiar with this or if you need a refresher, I’d suggest clicking here: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html
Have you ever been in a cave or mine shaft? It’s crazy how deep the darkness can be and how blinding light, even a soft light, can be when you step into it. Likewise, going from a bright room into a much darker area is blinding. Regardless of your transition, it usually takes your eyes awhile to adjust to its surroundings. Slowly though, we naturally get comfortable with the surroundings we find ourselves in and can see once again.
This past year we have had the opportunity and blessing to be able to see life in a more intense and diverse way than usual. Our eyes adjusted as we became much more sensitive and aware of what was going on in the spiritual realm. The truth of the matter is that the spiritual realm is more real than the physical realm we live in, but that’s another rant. There are stories that many of us can’t quite put into words and may even be reluctant to tell just because they are hard to express or even believe without seeing it and living it yourself.
Culture shock has much to do with our transitions and adjustments to another culture. However, coming home usually holds the greatest shock. This is because “home” holds a reference point. We’ve never been in many of these other countries before so while everything is new, it’s supposed to be. By the time we have come home we have changed but we don’t quite understand how much until we are back in familiar surroundings.
Initially, we go through a variety of emotions because we’re now caught in an in-between place. We see some things that we never saw before because we were too comfortable with our surroundings. We can be more sensitive to things that we once were desensitized to. We come back home to life with its assortment of changes including marriages, births, deaths, job changes and the like but few things honestly feel that much different. The nagging doubt or fear for some of us is that we aren’t that different either.
We’re left in the same surroundings that we found ourselves in when we left. Most of us left because there was a whisper of more deep down in our hearts that we had to chase after. The things that didn’t satisfy us before are somehow suddenly thrust back into our lives and we feel the old desires calling us to go back to how it used to be. The only difference often seems to be that the things that didn’t satisfy us before somehow satisfy us even much less than they did before…with the constant question of “what next” lurking at each step. We are left with a choice to head deeper into His heart or deeper into darkness…because the way things once were, will never be again.
Since I have been back, I have found myself to be less motivated and less decisive than usual. This is not the change you were probably expecting and won’t be the long term change you will see in me. My guess is that I’m not the only world racer that fits this bill. Don’t worry though…we’re ok and we’ll be alright. We’re just going through a little time period where our eyes are adjusting back to the surroundings we find ourselves in with the knowledge that there is far more (even more than we saw this last year.) The question many of us are finding hard to answer in our hearts is how to balance the truth we’ve experienced this past year with the needs we’re surrounding by today. If it looks like we’re stumbling around a little bit with little balance or direction, it’s because our eyes are adjusting to how we can tangibly do something about the things we see that need to change.
This past year we have seen some things from our own eyes. We have seen some things from the eyes of others. We’ve also seen some things from the eyes of God. After a year of change, our eyes are adjusting once again but the question and decision we face is whether we will look at this world through our own eyes, the eyes of others our through His. Regardless, seeing clearly is more than half the battle even if it means we have to wait once again we have to adjust.
For me, I am heading to Georgia for a little while with Project Search Light and am hoping that it won’t be long before I know which direction I will be heading in longer term. The truth of the matter is that this year has held more value than even we know and the fruit will come…but sometimes it just takes time.
